


Nor whole and unbroken

by InvertedPhantasmagoria



Category: Bleach
Genre: Denial of Feelings, Despair, Existential Angst, F/M, First Time, Hand Jobs, Headcanon, Heavy Angst, Hidden Depths, Hollows are miserable, Implied/Referenced Blood and Gore, Intersex, Intimacy, Mental Instability, Nnoitra is fucked up and broken, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Reader-Insert, Self-Hatred, Sexual Inexperience, Touch-Starved, Trauma, Trust Issues, Unhealthy Coping Mechanisms, Vulnerability, mild xeno, smut and pain
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-24
Updated: 2021-01-24
Packaged: 2021-03-16 04:07:49
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,172
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28950153
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/InvertedPhantasmagoria/pseuds/InvertedPhantasmagoria
Summary: But he’s opened up to you more than he thought was possible. Nnoitra’s seams have been torn apart by your hands. You’ve gazed at the most fragile parts within and treasured the sight of all of them. As weak as he is for you, Nnoitra has trouble saying no to much of anything. Pain means nothing to him, so even if it hurt, he wouldn’t care. The problem comes when pain is the exact opposite of what you want him to bear. Soft things. Kind things. These are what make Nnoitra feel like he’s going to fall apart.. . .The one where sort-of sex happens and Nnoitra is incredibly broken.
Relationships: Nnoitra Gilga/Reader
Comments: 3
Kudos: 109





	Nor whole and unbroken

**Author's Note:**

> So uhhhhh.... Nnoitra has _issues_. I love writing him because of those issues. Holy fuck this man is a walking pile of angst, self-hatred, and despair. This is smut in the sense that sex happens, but the sexy stuff takes a MAJOR backseat to Nnoitra being deeply fucked up. >.> That said, I adore how this story came out. I think it's one of my better pieces in terms of both expressing my Hollow headcanons and characterizing Nnoitra the way I see him. Enjoy the fic and the sad mantis man!
> 
> arrancxr.tumblr.com

Hands on his skin make Nnoitra flinch. When his Hierro is down, when his flesh is soft and unprotected by the armor he’s known for, even simple touch is unbearable. Monsters aren’t meant to be handled gently, and a monster is what Nnoitra is. Even if you seem to be convinced otherwise. 

A ‘first time’ is supposed to be special. That’s what you say. Since Nnoitra has never had kindness or good things, those are exactly what you want to give him. It’s a stupid idea. Nnoitra rolled his eye at the thought. You know better than anyone what he’s capable of, what he’s done. Wanting to treat him like a _person_ is weird enough. Giving him things that only people are supposed to have is just worse. You don’t seem to get the idea. 

But he’s opened up to you more than he thought was possible. Nnoitra’s seams have been torn apart by your hands. You’ve gazed at the most fragile parts within and treasured the sight of all of them. As weak as he is for you, Nnoitra has trouble saying no to much of anything. Pain means nothing to him, so even if it hurt, he wouldn’t care. The problem comes when pain is the exact opposite of what you want him to bear. Soft things. Kind things. These are what make Nnoitra feel like he’s going to fall apart. 

Admitting that hurts worse than any wound to his body ever could. 

Your bed is as good as a nest. Even though he’s most comfortable sleeping on hard ground, his back to something solid, Nnoitra finds himself longing to burrow deeper into the soft things you humans seem to love. 

(When he sleeps beside you, you press your fragile, human body up against his back. You guard his weak points without a second thought.)

Now, lying beside you, Nnoitra is more uncomfortable than he’s been in a while. Your warm, uncalloused hand cups his cheek. Your eyes stare into his. He can hear your slow, even breathing, and knowing what’s coming next is just making all of this worse. Intimacy is something that Hollows should never feel. Nnoitra bristles at the thought. He wants to put up defenses before you can tear him apart, but— It’s getting harder to hold them up. 

“Can I kiss you?” your gentle voice questions. 

“Do what you want,” Nnoitra snaps back. He averts his eye, then. Looking right at you is making him feel like you can see _too much._

You lean forward. Instead of pressing your lips to his as Nnoitra expects, you brush them against his eyepatch in a gesture so tender and exposing that Nnoitra’s breath hitches pathetically in his chest. 

Your next target is his lips, after all. The feeling of your soft, hot mouth and the taste of your skin drag up things in Nnoitra’s subconscious that probably shouldn’t be there. You lick against his teeth. He doesn’t know what he’s doing. His kisses have to be too rough and too clumsy. Something like Nnoitra doesn’t know how to touch living things without hurting them. 

But you hum happily through all of it. Your hand finds a place on his side. You squirm until your body is even closer to his. When you pull away from the kiss, your eyes are tender and full of something like _want._

“Let me touch you,” is the next thing you say. Nnoitra inhales. His Hierro flexes. Hands on his skin is a threat, a _threat,_ but when it’s you—

Any will to resist crumbles like it’s been decayed. 

With your guidance, Nnoitra slips out of his clothes at a pace that leaves plenty of time for the awful thoughts to settle in. Nakedness is taboo among Hollows for the sole reason that it’s _vulnerable._ Nnoitra’s own bony, lanky form, made up of Hierro-clad skin, lean, hard muscle, and not much else does nothing but disgust him. What do you see in the form of a beast that makes you want to touch it gently? It’s willpower alone that keeps him from curling in on himself to hide his stomach and throat. 

Your hand finds a path from the base of his neck down to his shoulder. Tracing over the muscle there with just enough pressure to _feel_ makes Nnoitra twitch. He’s filled with the urge to put his armor up, and yet—

Your soft smile does things to his insides that he can’t withstand. 

When you press a kiss to his collarbone with a warm, wet mouth, a shudder tears through him that he didn’t expect. It should put him on edge. A mouth near one of his weak points should bring nothing but the need to defend himself. Instead, his body begins to go limp in that strange, awful way that means his instincts don’t know what to do. Your fingers trace a line along the cold skin of his chest, over where his heart should have been.

The two of you sit up. You wrap one arm around him so you can feel out the bones of his spine. The other hand rests against his chest as if searching for a heartbeat that you’ll never find. You smile up at him with nothing but trust and adoration. Nnoitra fights the urge to pull away and fucking _hide._ Nothing should make him this weak. He doesn’t hesitate when it comes to battles that’ll only end in one person bleeding out in the sand, but for some impossible reason, your softness is something he can hardly bear. Being treated so tenderly hurts worse than any wound ever has. 

“I love you,” you say in the same breath that you lean forward to kiss under his jaw. Nnoitra bites the inside of his mouth just to taste the blood. 

Your tongue and teeth worry a small, lightly-stinging spot into his skin. The contact sends little shocks of _something_ down his nerves. Every part of him that your hands touch is warming up under them from human heat. 

And all too soon, you reach for his eyepatch. Whispering a request for permission, you drag your fingers through his hair. Nnoitra’s throat closes up. _That’s_ a weakness worse than any other. You’ve touched him there before, but it was— he couldn’t— The thought _aches_ in his chest. 

“Take it off,” he sighs. You do so with careful fingers. 

The unfortunate reality that two of the most sensitive places on his body align is one that Nnoitra will never cease to resent. You trace a line up his cheek, wandering dangerously close to where bone begins. 

Every touch from you makes him feel tense and too warm. You lean up to press a kiss to his cheek. He _knows_ you want to touch that place, but allowing it is something he can’t let himself do. Not now. This situation is exposing too much of him already. He can’t be reduced to even less. 

“I’m going to touch you now,” are your next words. 

Instead of anything he expects, though, your hand then finds the space on his lower abdomen just above where his cock begins. It shouldn’t come as such a surprise. Nnoitra went into this knowing that human sex acts were going to happen. That doesn’t make it any less strange when you trace warm touches right above where he gets sensitive. Genitals are weird. Hollows have no need for them. They’re a leftover from human life that has no reason to exist on him, one that he’s not supposed to need. 

But your warmth curls around the velvety skin of his cock, and suddenly, Nnoitra’s body tucks in without any bit of his control. 

You stroke up and down with feather-light touches. Your fingers feel out his shaft from the base to just below the head. The soft, curious look on your face might be killing him, and Nnoitra has to force himself to _breathe._

He’s never been touched there. There’s no fucking reason to. Hollows can’t reproduce, and it’s not like sex is a smart idea when everything around you wants to eat you alive. The sensation of hot, hot fingers sliding up and down sensitive tissue is entirely new. Nnoitra’s body jerks and curls in every time you hit a particularly tender place. His breath comes in hitches. 

“You’re so cold...” you murmur. Nnoitra almost laughs. He’s fucking _dead,_ and you have the nerve to say that. Don’t you get it? He’s a monster and a walking corpse, and you’re trying to pleasure him like he’s a person. 

Before he can say anything (which is probably a good thing), your mouth returns to his skin. This time, it’s against the stand-out tendons in his throat. The sudden scrape of teeth makes Nnoitra tense. He keeps his Hierro relaxed by force alone. Your warm, wet mouth works over his skin with purpose, and Nnoitra feels his muscles slowly going limp. Touches there come with the added insult of dragging up the instinct that comes when danger is near and fighting isn’t an option. You’re not dangerous at all, but Nnoitra’s stupid fucking instincts don’t know that, and they take control. 

Slowly, his head tips back. His breathing slows. You push him back to the bed little by little, and all Nnoitra can do is comply. Even though he could snap your spine with ease, somehow, his body lets you shove him back without resisting a bit. When you have him pinned— something _spikes._ A sharp burst of instinct-need draws what’s almost a whine from his throat. 

And he’s _not_ making those noises. He’s not making any noise, to be specific. There’s no way he’s going to let you hear any damn pathetic sounds. Whether he can trust you or not, you don’t need to be witness to the side of his instinctive behavior that makes him look _weak._

“Fucking st-stop it,” he hisses, horrified at the stutter in his voice. Your hand hasn’t quit moving on his cock, and Nnoitra is coming to the bizarre realization that the thing is starting to rise, flush, and fill with blood. 

He knows what this is, yeah, but that doesn’t make it any less weird. Getting hard is something he’s never had happen before, and your touch doing it to him just feels creepy and surreal. The worst part is that he’s getting increasingly sensitive to the slide and drag of your fingertips. Your teeth nip at his neck lightly and your thumb swipes over the _wet_ tip of him— when did that happen? Nnoitra groans before he can keep the sound inside. 

Every bit of rational thought says to snap at you and push you away before he can make any more of a fool out of himself. But you make him soft in ways that Nnoitra hates more than anything, and he can’t bring himself to do it. He can feel your contented smile against his skin. 

(And worse than that, some part of him _wants_ the touch.)

His body is heating up from the inside. There’s a strange, warm feeling settled both under his skin and centered around the pit of his stomach. Is this what arousal feels like? He hates it. It feels sick and strange and _wrong._

“Relax,” your soft voice breathes. You finally stop worrying marks into his neck. “You’re okay, Nnoitra. This won’t hurt you. If you really want to stop, you can tell me... but I want to make you feel good. You need to relax a little. Let me take care of you, please? Let me do this?”

Nnoitra growls. The sound would make a lesser Hollow all but collapse in fear. With you, your stupid, trusting smile doesn’t fade for a second. 

“...just get on with it,” he spits eventually. This is a mistake. 

But you only smile wider. There’s so much naked adoration in your eyes that Nnoitra can almost forget how uncomfortable he is. His body is exposed for you while you’re still fully clothed. Your hand is around one of the most sensitive parts of him. His instincts are pushing him to go belly-up and submit to the ‘threat’ that he can’t process, and Nnoitra can only sit there helplessly as he lets you do all of it. This is pathetic. _He’s_ pathetic. 

You kiss him again. Your lips mold to his, mingling saliva and the taste of you. Nnoitra’s stomach would ache with need if you hadn’t pushed the perpetual starvation at bay earlier with a meal you made yourself. That’s just one more piece of undeserved kindness that makes him sick. 

As you stroke him, your hand is getting wetter. Nnoitra realizes belatedly that _he’s_ the one producing the slickness. The tip of his dick is leaking all over your fingers. It’s... never done that before. This is something totally new, and when your touch next slides over the slit, Nnoitra’s hips shudder forward before he can hold it back. The sensation was an electric shock through his nerves, worse than being cut open by a blade. 

After a moment or two of playing with the loose skin there and lightly toying with the slit, your fingers move down. You trace a slow path along the underside of his cock, lower, down to his balls, which you nudge lightly with your fingertips. And then, lower yet. Your touch finds the small, tight hole that Nnoitra has always preferred to ignore. He hadn’t paid attention to it yet, but now that you’re there, he can’t push aside the feeling of _wet._ That place is leaking even more. Your fingers slide, frictionless, over the skin that’s all but soaked with his own fluids. A bolt of shame hits him hard. 

That place is so sensitive that even your gentle ministrations have him fighting the urge to let his legs squeeze closed. The feeling is new, strange, and Nnoitra is struggling to process it. This is sex. What’s always been beyond him as a Hollow is now happening, is now dragging him under a tide of physical arousal that he doesn’t know how to contain. It _hurts._

Or maybe it doesn’t. At this point, it’s getting hard to tell. 

You keep tracing his hole like you have nothing else to focus on. The idea of putting anything inside is disturbing, but the light brush of your touch against the outer folds of skin isn’t too bad. It’s bearable, at least. 

Nnoitra dares to look down at himself. What he sees forms a lurch of nausea low in his gut. His cock is red, hard, and straining against his abdomen. It’s slicked with its own fluids and looks even more needy and sensitive than he’d pictured. Your fingers disappear between his legs, and the sight of that is enough to place a strange, tight feeling in his chest. 

“Breathe,” is the next thing you say. With a low, calm hum, you switch the motions of your hand to long, slow strokes over everything in your path. 

“Fuck you,” Nnoitra hisses, anger the only defense he can find. 

“I think that’s what I’m doing,” you laugh, your tone much too fond. “Are you okay? This isn’t too far, is it? I don’t want this to be bad for you.”

“I’m fuckin’ fine. Quit treating me like I’m weak.” Nnoitra doesn’t voice that he’s feeling sick, too hot, and trapped inside his own skin. He doesn’t say that his instincts are experiencing a near-meltdown from just this much. 

“You’re shaking.”

That gives Nnoitra pause. His eye goes wide. When he pays attention... he is. Little shivers are running through his body in a way that feels so weak it shouldn’t be possible. This is wrong. It shouldn’t be—

You take Nnoitra’s big, long-fingered hand in the one of yours that isn’t busy feeling up his sensitive parts. You hold it, the hand that’s wielded a sword and cut down more lives than you could ever understand, and kiss his scarred knuckles like none of that matters at all. Your lips are soft. 

“It’s okay, Nnoitra. I love you. I won’t hurt you. I want to make you feel good. Let me be good to you.” As you whisper those words, that free hand wanders. You lean over him, trace up his ribcage, and—

With enough pause to give him time to stop you or pull away, you trace an impossibly gentle touch over the lower teeth of his mask. 

A shudder drags through Nnoitra’s limbs that he can’t stop. His breath freezes to a solid mass in his chest. You rub your fingertips over that place once, twice, and once again. The wave of pure instinct that poisons Nnoitra’s veins gives him no option but to let every muscle in his body go limp. Submit, that weak voice in the back of his head whispers. Safety is just out of reach, and if he lets you do as you please, maybe he’ll be able to feel something other than the empty chill of despair that goes soul-deep. 

One point of your warmth strokes where he’s wet over and over again. The other drags fingerprints against what’s left of the human heart he lost long before he can remember. Instinct-brain makes him go fuzzy and distant, and Nnoitra’s head tips back at the same time he exhales every bit of air his chest had hoarded. It feels good. Too good. So, so good. 

The longer you touch him, the more his arousal becomes impossible to ignore. Nnoitra wouldn’t have known the feeling until now, but at this point, it can’t be anything else. Heat ebbs and flows in his belly and between his thighs, and the only thing steadying it all is your touch. Every wet slide and gentle press pushes the feeling higher. It’s climbing toward something that feels impossible to reach. Thinking is becoming difficult. 

And all the while, you keep feeling out the shape of his mask. The smothering sense of calm that it brings wraps its fingers around Nnoitra’s insides leaves him no room to fight back. He wants so many things. 

And none of them are fit for a monster like him. 

By the time your warm fingers brush against the very edge of his Hollow hole, Nnoitra is in a haze of instinct-need and his body’s desperation for the heat in his abdomen to burst and fade. Your touch should trigger nothing but anticipation of pain and the need to _survive,_ and yet—

The purr that rattles through Nnoitra’s chest is the greatest point of shame yet. You’ve pulled this noise out before, and he despises it. 

Purring means that he feels safe, which is the exact _opposite_ of how he should be reacting to this situation. Touch is a threat. Vulnerability is how you get killed. There’s no reason why he should want any of it. 

When his vision blurs into focus, Nnoitra finds himself meeting your gaze. And... what’s in your eyes makes it hard to find air. It makes his ribcage feel a few sizes too small. Is this what love looks like? You say that’s what you feel, but to really, _truly_ open your heart to something that lost its capability to be a person long ago shouldn’t be possible. Even like this, Nnoitra can feel the blood on his hands. That part never fades. 

Your hand returns to his cock, at last. It feels a little less vulnerable not to have your fingers threatening to go _inside_ of him, where his skin is thin and tender. This returning feeling just makes the hot need in his stomach spike and _burn,_ but it’s better. It’s easier than facing it. 

He’s making noises. They’re stifled and small, but noises nonetheless. The longer you touch him, the more unraveled he’s becoming. 

It’s awful. The Fifth Espada should tear you to shreds for daring to bring him this low, but _Nnoitra_ can only lie there and feel a sharp, stabbing pain somewhere deep in the meat of his chest. 

Your fingers find a rhythm that makes his hips stutter. They brush against a little spot just under his tip that makes him feel like his blood is igniting within his veins. At a quickening of your pace and a twist of your hand over his slick skin, Nnoitra chokes on a moan that he can’t control. Mercifully, you take your fingers away from the void in his skull. 

“Trust me,” you say, and your voice seems so distant that Nnoitra can barely make out the words through the buzzing filling his head to the brim. “I’ll be good to you. You know you can trust me. You won’t have to hurt.”

 _That_ makes Nnoitra’s lungs spasm around what might have been a laugh. As it is, it comes out as something dry and much too pathetic. He won’t have to hurt? This already hurts worse than anything he’s suffered through in his miserable excuse for an existence. Or at least— it hurts in a way that a lifetime of killing never prepared him for. He knows what the end is. Orgasm is a fate that, at this point, sounds like it might fucking kill him. He should pull away before you make any more of a wreck out of him. He shouldn’t allow himself to fall any further than he already has. 

Weakness is what gets you killed. Vulnerability is the greatest sin a Hollow can commit. He’s a beast, a monster, and only good for killing— no matter what you think you see in him. Reality can’t be escaped forever, even when you think you can find something _good_ in what he’s become.

But when he looks at you, Nnoitra can’t bring himself to resist this. 

Whatever he’s thinking when his body gives up is lost. And _gives up_ really is the right word for what happens when the heat inside boils over. 

Abruptly, a feeling unlike any other hits him. Every muscle in his body pulls taut. Something in his stomach clenches over and over and over again, pulsing at a pace that feels like it’s ripping his insides out. Liquid heat surges through him and melts every bit of coherent thought in its path. Nnoitra doesn’t know what he expected _coming_ to be, but this feels more like dying than anything he’s been through yet. 

It drags on for what feels like an eternity, but then, finally, the agonizing tension begins to ebb. All-consuming pleasure fades to a wave of blissful warmth that settles over his nerves. Nnoitra finds breath again only to realize that his throat is raw from a sound he doesn’t remember making. 

The only thing that he can keep track of is the persistent feeling of a warm hand rubbing slow lines over his stomach. Protective. Kind. 

By the time he returns to coherency, Nnoitra is shaking even worse than before. You look somewhere between pleased and deeply concerned. There’s sticky wetness all over his lower abdomen and thighs, his body is tacky with a cold sweat, and Nnoitra feels _disgusting_ on far too many levels. He feels more wrung out and exhausted than after almost losing a fight.

You take a soft towel to his dick, the space between his legs, and the area around it, cleaning up the mess of fluid and sweat. He flinches at the sensitivity when you touch anywhere too tender... you act like you don’t notice, which Nnoitra is silently grateful for. 

His pride can’t take many more hits tonight.

And then, you’re lying down beside him. Your warm body is solid and _real,_ and Nnoitra has to battle every stupid instinct that demands he get as close to that heat as possible and stay there until nothing hurts. 

“Are you okay?” you ask. It’s a question that has to be answered.

“Fine,” Nnoitra says... or more like tries to say. The one word comes out so weak and quiet that he can barely believe it’s his own voice. 

You hum. You clearly don’t believe him. “I told you I’d take care of you,” you say anyway. “I hope it wasn’t too bad for you. Your face at the end... you finally looked sort of peaceful.” The last bit is said in a tone that makes something in Nnoitra’s _soul_ ache. It’s not hope. It’s not sadness. It’s what happens when you love something that’s already broken. 

“Fuck off,” Nnoitra replies, because he doesn’t know what else he can say. “That was miserable. I hope you’re happy.” The unspoken _I let you see me at my weakest_ hangs in the air like a fucking noose. Nnoitra isn’t going to acknowledge it and he’s damn hoping that you won’t either. 

“I love you,” you say, smiling. Nnoitra doesn’t have a clue how you do. He’s a disaster that’s too far past human to ever be redeemed. 

He’s never said those words back to you, and probably never will. 

There are things that are too painful for even him. 


End file.
